“You know what I was thinking, Savannah? You go on a little holiday. Somewhere exciting,” Vincent Ardeur said, signalling the waiter to bring the bill.
Savannah rolled her eyes and took her final sip of chardonnay. “A holiday, Daddy? Or a trip to a safe house?”
“Don’t be silly, Savannah.”
The waiter appeared at his side and placed the bill before her father.
“Everything to your liking, Mr. Ardeur?” This was her father’s favourite Franco-Italian restaurant, which, understandably, was called The Franco-Italiano. It served both French and Italian cuisine, which appealed to him, seeing as he was a hybrid himself.
“Yes. I expected nothing less,” Vincent Ardeur replied, paying the bill and adding a generous tip. They were the last diners.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’m not going anywhere, OK?” She continued the conversation after the waiter left. “I’m going to get a job, actually.”
She saw the annoyance in his face. “A job? Now you’re being ridiculous. I give you everything you could possibly want, Savannah,” he snapped.
Now she was infuriated. “I’m twenty-five-years old, Dad. Not five, in case you’re confused! I have a life. Well, I could have a life, if you stopped butting in and sending your heavies to watch me!”
“I wouldn’t care if you were forty, Savannah. You will always be under my protection. This is a dangerous world we live in,” he said calmly.
“No, it’s a dangerous world you live in,” she hissed.
Vincent Ardeur sighed heavily and stood up. “Dinner was nice.”
Savannah followed suit, violently pushing her chair back and ignoring the crashing sound it made as it tipped over. She was suddenly a five-year-old throwing a tantrum in her playroom.
Angelino was sitting at the table beside theirs, pretending not to listen. Savannah was giving him the cold shoulder after he went cold on her - and refused to sleep with her. Angelino would cut his testicles off before he’d betray her father. She supposed that was admirable, if not, sad.
“I’m walking home,” she spat at her father.
“No, you’re not. Your driver will take you there.”
“You can’t stop me.”
Her father nodded at Angelino. “Angie, take her.”
Before she could react, her bodyguard had wrapped his thick, muscular arms around her, and swung her over his shoulder.
“Put me down!” she shrieked at the top of her voice, kicking and punching him. IShe might as well have been hitting the Wailing Wall for all the damage she did.
Angelino said nothing as they left The Franco-Italiano. He flung his charge into the BMW. Her father got in and sat beside me. The doors were locked as the driver put the car into gear.
“I saw a five-year-old little girl just now,” her father said quietly.
“Oh, yeah?” She looked out the window, into the darkened road. “And I saw a tyrant.”
*
She saw her first gun when she was six. It was shortly after her mother died, and it was a rainy Saturday evening.
Her father had been in his study with a bunch of his pals. She'd recognized most of them – Uncle Sly, Uncle Donnie, Mr. Palazzo – but the rest were unfamiliar. They were all dressed in black suits, as if they were attending a funeral.
In her six-year-old mind, she had known that something big was going down. She'd been lonely, scared, and sad after the death of her mother, and her father was always busy, although Friday nights were strictly Family Time.
She had managed to sneak into the study during that meeting. All she'd wanted to do was see what was happening. Curiosity, of course.
And then Uncle Donnie had pulled out a gun.
Just casually whipped it out. He was playing with it, swinging it around his index finger.
And you know what scared her?
No one paid him any attention. They just carried on talking, as if he were twirling a lollipop or something. As if whipping out weapons was as natural as the stars shining in the sky.
Now, at twenty-five, Savannah's no longer that naïve. Vincent Ardeur, her father, had taken her aside and explained what he was: A bad guy. There were no pretences, no lies. He told her straight. And she would always be grateful to him for that.
But she would never be appreciative of the fact that she was dragged into his sordid lifestyle. Never allowed to go out late at night in case she was kidnapped. Never allowed to put on mascara without a fucking bodyguard present. Not allowed to do this, not allowed to do that…
Am I supposed to be grateful for my lonely existence in my apartment in snazzy Pellagra Torres, the equivalent to Beverly Hills? Am I supposed to be happy that I can’t do normal things, like, I don’t know, go to work? Go clubbing? Eat out?
“Don’t stress your father out.”
Angelino was standing in my bedroom doorway, leaning against the doorjamb.
I threw him a dirty look. Why couldn’t my father have hired an ugly, overweight git, instead of Angelino Bianchi, a sexy Italian stallion?
“I don’t know what you mean,” I replied, hauling out my special box from the closet. I knelt down.
“I think you do, Savannah,” he said. Savannah heard him come up behind her. “Cosa fai?” [What are you doing?]
Angelino’s other goal in life was to teach Savannah Italian. She didn’t care for her Italian side, if all it meant was mobsters and gangbangs, and she made sure that he knew it.
“I’m reminiscing,” she said softly. She pulled out my high school journal. God, when was the last time I read through this?
“Is it good reminiscing or bad reminiscing?”
She looked up at him. “Angie, life used to be simpler for me. Less complicated. I had friends. I did things. I had fun.”
“You can still have that.”
She shook her head vehemently. “You heard my father yesterday. He’s never going to let me leave the nest. He’s always going to be worrying.”
The thought splintered into every crevice of her soul, like a mass of broken shards. Her father's power was like a thick, dark shroud, blanketing and suffocating her.
“Because you give him something to worry about,” said Angie. “You’re wild, Savannah, whether you admit that or not. And being wild gets you nowhere but six feet under.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” she muttered bitterly. “Do I need to pay for this advice?”
He let out a bellow of laughter.
“Please. Leave me alone for a sec?”
“Sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“Fine. I’ll be in the living room.” He walked out, leaving her in the gentle silence of her bedroom.
Savannah hardly went through this memory box on account of how many painful memories it induced. But she figured that she needed that now. She needed to remember.
She shuffled through pictures of her mother. She had been beautiful. A hybrid of many races, her mother had been black, and her father half-German, half-Haitian. Ella van de Merwe. That was her mother’s name. She had been so exotic-looking. Savannah had inherited almost nothing from her, aside from her figure, which had started developing at the tender age of nine.
Had her mother known about her husband’s murky lifestyle and turned a blind eye to it? Or had she been innocent and trusting? Her dad had never mentioned that, and she suddenly wanted to know.
She sighed, wishing her mother's chocolate-brown eyes and gleaming smile could give her an answer. Carefully, she tucked the picture away.
Another picture caught her eye. She thought she had ripped it apart years ago - but clearly she hadn’t.
Tony Dekker’s arrogant face smirked at her. She remembered this picture. Last day of college. Oh yes, her father had humoured me enough to graciously allow her to study law for four years.
Tony had introduced Savannah to his parents, as his fiancée. She remembered the stifling pride she’d felt. Savannah Dekker had sounded so catchy.
Tony’s mother, she’d noticed, wouldn’t sneeze without permission from her husband. She’d given Savanna a thin, watery smile, while Tony’s dad had said coldly, “Fiancée? Anthony, be realistic. What’s this girl doing with you? She’s obviously with you for your trust fund.”
Tony had stared back at his father, hate emanating from his body, while she’d wanted to punch the arrogant sonofabitch who looked so much like her Tony, but at the same time, looked nothing like him.
“Don’t mind him. He’s just an angry person. His job does that to him,” Tony had whispered in her ear, his lips lightly brushing against her earlobe.
Being a lawyer did that to you? Made you a hateful person?
That was the last time she'd seen Anthony Dekker, her supposed fucking fiancé. Thank God she hadn’t told her father about the alleged engagement; otherwise he would’ve hunted Tony down like a dog and killed him, although the thought had appealed to her more than once in the past.
She liked to think that, after four years, she had let go of the pain and humiliation of being dropped like a hot potato at the altar. But perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps that was the key to starting afresh: Closure. Perhaps it wasn’t the guys Savannah dated that were fucked up. Perhaps it was her.